Wayne's World II is like Mike Myers' Career: It Starts Out Great, Then Takes a Turn
It's funny, and then it's not so funny
I like to set the bar impossibly high for my projects. When I was conceptualizing We’ve Got a Terrible Show for You Tonight, We’ve Got a Great Show for You Tonight and the Every Episode Ever project, for example, I decided that it wouldn’t be enough to watch roughly one thousand 90 minute long episodes of Saturday Night Live and then write between two and seven books about them.
No, I decided that I would also read every book written about Saturday Night Live as well. I’m definitely not going to be able to achieve that because there are a lot of books about Saturday Night Live and until I’m able to clone myself, Multiplicity-style, I’m just not going to have the time for an exhausting and exhaustive project like that on top of everything else.
I have read a lot of books about Saturday Night Live already and I just learned something that I found utterly fascinating and revealing.
According to Wikipedia, Wayne's World II was originally a much different film with a different script and a different premise.
For the follow-up to the zeitgeist-capturing 1992 smash Myers, ever the Anglophile, decided to borrow the premise from the 1949 Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico and have Wayne and Garth seceding from the United States and establishing their own country after uncovering an ancient scroll.
The problem was that Myers apparently never told executives at Paramount that his idea for a sequel was also a remake of a movie from a legendary studio known for its droll satires.
Since it did not realize that the original conception of Wayne’s World II was a remake of a post-war British comedy it did not get the rights to Passport to Pimlico.
The sequel was apparently deep into pre-production when it was shut down and Paramount head Sherry Lansing angrily demanded a new screenplay that didn’t rip off a classic English comedy.
According to Lorne Michaels, Myers assumed that Paramount knew that he would be remaking Passport to Pimlico and had bought the remake rights in preparation. I don’t understand how the world works but Myers and Michaels could have saved a lot of time, expense and hassle by making absolutely certain that Paramount knew what they were getting into.
So if Wayne’s World II’s premise seems a little underwhelming it’s worth noting that it was cobbled together at the last minute, under exceedingly stressful conditions.
Backed into a corner Myers ends up using a pair of crutches he would go on to abuse in the dire, post-Austin Powers stage of his career: parody and repetition.
Myers is never afraid to go back to the well and repeat what worked the first around and the film is full of spoofs of ubiquitous fare.
These conscious or unconscious callbacks frequently work because they operate on the principle of escalation. In the first film, for example, a security guard played by Chris Farley gives our heroes information about a record mogul that seems wholly irrelevant but of course turns out to be very useful at the end.
On a similar note, Wayne encounters men moving a giant sheet of glass and crates full of chickens and watermelons so that in the third act he can experience the glorious cinematic cliche of a speeding car crashing deliriously through the holy trinity of glass, watermelon and chicken.
Wayne’s World II became an inevitability when Wayne’s World soared past even the highest expectations and became not just a hit movie but a critic’s darling and a pop culture phenomenon.
Writing the second screenplay Myers (who co-wrote the script with Saturday Night Live writers Bonnie and Terry Turner) was motivated by gut-wrenching fear that if he did not produce Lansing would hunt him down and murder his family. Given its origin story perhaps it’s not surprising that, like seemingly all sequels, Wayne’s World II is just like the original but not as fresh or good.
We open with Wayne catching us up on all that has transpired since the first movie. He’s still with Cassandra Tia Carerre), his sexy rocker girlfriend and still doing Wayne’s World for Aurora public access, local fame and no money.
In Wayne’s World Wayne competed for Cassandra’s affections with a slick show-biz player played by Rob Lowe who is intent on having a sexual and romantic as well as professional relationship with her.
In Wayne’s World II Wayne competes for Cassandra’s affections with a slick show-biz player intent on having a sexual and romantic as well as professional relationship with her played by Christopher Walken.
Wayne’s World II does not know what to do with Carrere, a highlight of the original film, other than keep her away from Wayne for narrative purposes. It similarly doesn’t have anything for Walken to do other than keep Cassandra away from Wayne.
Walken at one point dances lasciviously with Carrere in a way that makes Wayne seethe with jealousy but director Stephen Surjik repeatedly cuts away to Wayne reacting. If you’re going to have Christopher Walken dance in your movie LET HIM DANCE! Don’t relegate him to the background while your hero feels insecure.
Insecurity is the theme of Wayne’s World 2. Wayne is coming of age and becoming a man, or at least a man-boy. He is searching for direction and finds it in one of the mock mockable movies of the 1990s: Oliver Stone’s godawful, unwatchable biopic The Doors.
In a dream Wayne has a vision of a weird naked Indian guy and Jim Morrison. The spirit of the pretentious jackass beloved by some of the most pretentious assholes in the world tells Wayne to stage an epic concert.
He even gives Wayne the name of Del Preston (Ralph Brown) a legendary roadie who can turn his dreams into a reality. I am always up for mockery of Oliver Stone. The first five times the weird naked Indian (who is invariably referred to as the weird naked Indian) shows up I chuckled heartily. The next five to ten times I was less amused.
Brown’s character is a variation on the drug dealer he unforgettably played in Withal & I. He has the wonderfully cracked delivery of someone whose brain has been marinating in whiskey and LSD for decades and proves to be completely insane.
Wayne’s World 2 is so dense with parodies, allusions and references that it sometimes resembles a cinematic mix-tape where the familiar is re-contextualized in ways that are sometimes fresh and funny and sometimes evidence of creative exhaustion.
In my extensive exploration of the television program Saturday Night Live I’ve noticed that they sometimes give handsome, sexy men like Jon Hamm, Justin Timberlake and Alec Baldwin good material that allows them to showcase their surprising comic chops and sexy women non-material that showcases their sexiness.
To that end Garth here loses his virginity to a femme fatale played by Kim Basinger in a subplot begging for the cutting room floor. Basinger professed not to be familiar with Wayne’s World when Carvey called her and very politely asked her to be in the movie. She’s the furthest thing from a natural comedienne but then the movie doesn’t give her anything funny to do.
Wayne’s World starts strong and grows weaker as it progresses. It is ultimately that most ubiquitous of cinematic creatures—an arbitrary sequel born of commerce rather than creativity.
Wayne’s World II’s climax is more of a raging anti-climax. Instead of a big, star-studded spectacle Aerosmith, who were in the damn movie already, performs their forgettable, innuendo-laden 1993 single “Shut Up and Dance.”
Oh, and Rip Taylor throws confetti all over the crowd. THAT part I liked. The rest I found a little disappointing.
Woodstock it’s not. It’s not even Woodstock 99.
Wayne World’s has the misfortune to peak early. Movies that end strong send audiences home happy and satisfied. Movies that start strong and then peter out send audiences home disappointed.
I laughed a lot during Wayne’s World 2. It is a funny movie with some big laughs and great gags but it’s also one of those films that you like less the more you write and think about them. It has a lot of strengths but a lot of flaws as well.
Wayne’s World II is ultimately like Mike Myers' career in microcosm: it starts out great, with all the promise and potential in the world but steadily runs out of steam and inspiration in its second half.
::Paramount head Sherry Lansing angrily demanded a new screenplay that didn’t rip off a classic English comedy. ::
If Myers already licensed the remake rights, I fail to see the problem Lansing was having. It's not as if whoever owns Ealing Studios would cause a problem, and it's classic enough for the comedy snobs (which Myers clearly considers himself) while being funny enough for people who never heard of "PASSPORT TO PIMLICO" or "Ealing Studios".
::Garth here loses his virginity to a femme fatale played by Kim Basinger in a subplot begging for the cutting room floor. ::
I wonder if this subplot wasn't some sort of deal Myers made with Dana Carvey after he originally tried to push Carvey out of the sequel altogether? He'd gotten Penelope Spheeris shoved out of the director's chair and seemed to feel he could to the same to his co-star, so the movie would be All Mike Myers and...Whichever Babes He Wanted to Bang at the Moment! Kind of like what he did with the AUSTIN POWERS movies, given his ego seems to far outdistance any talent he has.....
“The spirit of the pretentious jackass beloved by some of the most pretentious assholes in the world tells Wayne to stage an epic concert.”
~ Said by some pretentious asshole ~